Streaming internet radio... Let us all pause to remember the nearly-realized Outlaw IR1000 that would have been nothing but streaming internet radio. It came a little too late to avoid the internet radio royalty battle and would likely be too specialized to survive the current streaming/media server market.

I haven't done much with streaming lately, although I have been keeping an eye on the steady trickle of new streaming and media sharing products. The price for the Gateway unit is certainly interesting, especially with the wireless access point included. I don't know how good the DVD player side of it is. The manual was a bit hidden, but I finally found it on Gateway's site and don't see any mention of it supporting streaming internet radio.

As for other alternatives, there's the venerable Audiotron, which will do both locally-stored audio files and internet streams but seems to have risen in price slightly from $200 to around $240 and doesn't offer video or built-in wireless. There is a product similar to the Audiotron called the Squeezebox (made by Slim Devices), which is available as a wired ethernet version for $200 or a wireless version for $280. It uses a pretty slick software package called "SlimServer" to handle media serving and will do internet radio, but like the Audiotron it is audio only. You can download SlimServer and play with it -- I've used it to create a local music stream that other PC's can access using WinAmp (part of an ongoing discussion about ditching the office muzak system). There's also the Linksys WMA11B, which sells online for about $140 or so but would require you to get a wireless access point or run network cable to it. It will do both pictures and music, but I don't know if it will do internet streams since the manual makes no mention of internet radio (it appears to be basically the same sort of device as Gateway's player, only with the DVD player portion removed). HP's got a similar media receiver (the EW5000) which is available for around $140, but some of the online reviews have been pretty uninspiring.

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